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Trust the experts

PhilPapers recently conducted a survey of opinion among academic philosophers, the results of which have been posted here. Here’s how all respondents from the survey’s “target faculty” answered when asked where they stand on the question of God’s existence:

ALL RESPONDENTS:

Accept or lean toward atheism 72.8%
Accept or lean toward theism 14.6%
Other 12.5%

And here’s how the results came out for respondents in two key subdisciplines:

RESPONDENTS SPECIALIZING IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION:

Accept or lean toward theism 72.3%
Accept or lean toward atheism 19.1%
Other 8.5%

RESPONDENTS SPECIALIZING IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE PHILOSOPHY:

Accept or lean toward atheism 41.1%
Accept or lean toward theism 29.4%
Other 29.4%

Quite a difference. And regarding the last (Medieval/Renaissance) set of responses, it is worth pointing out that the fine-grained results show that “Other” includes a lot of agnostics, and that when the “lean towards” are excluded, atheism and theism are tied at 23.5% each, so that there are far fewer convinced atheists within this group than it might at first seem. It would also be nice to know what the results would have looked like if we separated out the medieval and renaissance specialists. (I would speculate that most Renaissance specialists approach their field out of interest in its relevance for understanding early modern philosophy rather than out of interest in medieval philosophy; and if so this is likely to reflect, on the part of Renaissance specialists, more familiarity with early modern philosophy than with medieval philosophy.) It seems very likely that the results for specialists in medieval philosophy specifically would have been more like those for specialists in philosophy of religion, especially for medieval specialists whose interest is in philosophy of religion related topics rather than in general metaphysics/epistemology, history of logic, etc.

Now, what do these results mean? You can be sure that some atheists will read the latter two sets of results as evidence only that many people who believe in God for non-philosophical reasons have flooded into philosophy of religion and medieval studies. And they will read the former results as evidence that philosophers who don’t enter the field with a religious ax to grind are more likely to be atheists.

But of course there is another obvious way to interpret the results in question – as clear evidence that those philosophers who have actually studied the arguments for theism in depth, and thus understand them the best – as philosophers of religion and medieval specialists naturally would – are far more likely to conclude that theism is true, or at least to be less certain that atheism is true, than other philosophers are. And if that’s what the experts on the subject think, then what the “all respondents” data shows is that most academic philosophers have a degree of confidence in atheism that is rationally unwarranted.

This dovetails with the judgment once made by the atheist philosopher Quentin Smith (in his paper “The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism”) to the effect that “the great majority of naturalist philosophers have an unjustified belief that naturalism is true and an unjustified belief that theism (or supernaturalism) is false.” And it also dovetails with the evidence we have examined in several earlier posts (e.g. here, here, and here) indicating that the more confident an atheist philosopher is that there are no good arguments for God’s existence, the more likely it is that he demonstrably does not know what the hell he is talking about.

In any event, it turns out that the people who are most likely to know what they are talking about on this subject tend overwhelmingly to believe in God, or at least (as in the combined medieval/renaissance results) to reject atheism. And as certain atheist philosophers like to insist, we should trust the experts, right?

Comments (46)

Question: how do you balance out for the predisposition to choose a career in philosophy of religion precisely because you believe that religion is fundamentally important and is (perhaps) understudied at large, by people who already believe in God? Versus people who choose other sorts of philosophy because they view religion as unimportant, precisely because they already don't believe in God? Isn't there a strong possibility that the selection of disciplines is biased in itself, and so the professional thoughts and beliefs of the persons in the different disciplines are colored by pre-dispositions?

- God: There are significantly more atheists among faculty than among grad students (70% vs 54%); the proportion of atheists among undergrads in pretty much the same as among grad students (56%).

Looks like Theism is the future.

Ed,

Perhaps philosophy of religion attracts people with theistic commitments or those predisposed to theism (such would be my expectation). Certainly, the distribution of commitments in philosophy of religion gives us reason to believe (I wrote "shows" first--oops) that those who are experts in the field haven't found any compelling arguments against theism, though there might be some arguments which might be sufficient for those lacking a commitment to theism. I think that those not in field (which includes philosophers who are not philosophers of religion, either by training or by research) who argue that there are compelling arguments against theism would have to be classified as cranks.

I thought that we were ignoring Leiter as not being worth our time engaging? Aren't there some philosophers worth engaging?

Brad Monton posted about a related issue on his blog--that professors of philosophy have more of a commitment to atheism than grad or undergrad philosophy majors--and he wonders why. That seems to be a question for sociology of philosophy (or academia generally). The divergence between profs and students regarding commitment to atheism may cross discipline boundaries.

This may be related--I remember seeing a study which compared commitments to creation vs. evolution at the university level vs. the college level (done at Harvard).

Does university academia attract atheists? Or perhaps, does the university academic culture repel theists? Certainly, young-earth-creationists often feel threatened by it. (Jerry Bergman has written a book containing substantial anecdotal evidence of the undermining of the careers of YECs by their opponents.) This would need to be studied by sociologists to get more info. But do theists feel alien to university culture? Does the political correctness of university life create a feeling of alienation in theists? Is there a culture war being waged on university campuses? I think so.

Brad Monton posted about a related issue on his blog--that professors of philosophy have more of a commitment to atheism than grad or undergrad philosophy majors--and he wonders why.

Perhaps younger people come into philosophy with at least somewhat of an open mind on the question of theism and then get their openness of mind beat out of them by closed-minded professors who give them bad grades for, I dunno, questioning naturalism.

It's not a very flattering picture of philosophy profs., I admit, but I think it's becoming increasingly accurate, as reality comes to mirror more and more the caricature of the hard-core, bullying atheist professor

I don't think the two interpretations are mutually exclusive. People who were already inclined toward religious belief tended towards the study of philosophy of religion, and then once established there they found that their beliefs were generally well supported. In any case, it appears that studying philosophy of religion doesn't lead one to conclude that religion is obviously a lot of bunk, which you would expect if it were.

more and more the caricature of the hard-core, bullying atheist professor

Lydia, I am reminded of the story of the philosophy prof who explicitly denied theism holds any water and directly challenged any Christians in his class to produce a miracle - to Phil 101 classes. That sort of bullying would not be tolerated for vast swathes of other issues. At least based on anecdotes and polls of perceived concerns, there is plenty of bullying , and it winked at or protected by the departmental and university authorities.

Well, it's spreading, too, Tony. Now it's to the point where students can face similar bullying for not being naturalists, which goes farther than simply being non-theists. I worry a bit about how many grad students who are non-naturalists, much less theists, much less Christians, will be willing to run the gauntlet and go on to teach philosophy. This sort of thing becomes self-perpetuating and self-accelerating with frightening rapidity.

Tony,

Stories like that shock me. Is it true? I have to admit, that sort of environment makes my attitude towards academics in general, and the university/college systems in particular, downright adversarial.

Having been at several institutions, I have never seen any bullying re: theism or naturalism. There was sometimes vigourous debate between graduate students -- as Bobcat can attest. The news has yet to get out about the non-problem that is the logical problem of evil. (Perhaps this is because philosophy of religion is not widely taught or required at a graduate level.) I have personally seen Bobcat turn the tables on over-enthusiastic criticism. It is possible that a lesser philosopher would have felt defeated and bullied.

But I have yet to see a professor bully a student for being a theist or non-naturalist. I would not be surprised if it happened from time to time -- especially re: theism; and I would not be surprised if students mistook demands for further reason for bullying. (Non-naturalism is not a majority view, but it has a largish minority advocating for it in the profession.)

I will gently mock students from time to time for the belief in auras and such. But, for the most part, I don't care what they believe -- so long as they are not subject to beliefs that block philosophical inquiry. I suspect that my professors in graduate school took a similar view -- though in their off time, in social circumstances, they might speak more freely.

Anyway, at my graduate institution, it seems, there was a premium on cleverly wierd beliefs and so theism at least could have that going for it. But perhaps my impressions are distorted by the fact that I am an avowed atheist.

In the overall survey results, there was an interesting discrepancy in that 23% more respondents accepted or leaned towards atheism than those that accepted or leaned towards naturalism. The number jumps to 31% if you only count those with accepted views. So there is the appearance that a significant number of these atheists either have some supernatural beliefs or leave open the possibility. I would be surprised if the same disregard for “orthodox” views did not also apply to those respondents who accept theism.

Alex,

I agree with you about our Ph.D.-awarding institution. The bullying came from the grad students, and not from the professors, who would let us know what they thought only if we asked (with one or two rather gentle exceptions--our resident philosopher of mind, for example, thought that Christianity was false, and was happy to say so, but he also conceded that the mad, bad, or God argument was powerful). Having said that, there are a couple of exceptions I've run into in my current line of work, unfortunately.

Alex and Bobcat, my own perception from anecdotes filtering back to me and coming within my own knowledge is that things are changing from even twenty years ago. (I say "even," because nowadays twenty years ago doesn't seem all _that_ long ago to me.) That is to say, that at least in certain places naturalism and atheism are hardening into antipathy to non-naturalism and, in particular, Christianity (more so than mere theism, perhaps). My own perception, which could be wrong, is that there was a sort of interregnum between the _old_ atheistic tough guys of, say, the 1960's or 1970's (I could be off a bit in my decades there) and the rise in power of the new atheistic bullies (the Leiters and friends, for example) of the 21st century. This interregnum may indeed owe a great deal to Alvin Plantinga, personally, for making Christianity and theism respectable, sociologically, within philosophical circles. Now, I sense, there is a group of people looking around and in essence saying, "Who let all _these Christians_ in here?" and looking for ways to change that. Naturalism per se, of course, has become "hot" lately, and that may have something to do with it.

A lot of this is conjecture and guesswork, but it's where I see things going.

Alex, it seems strange to me that theism would be characterized as a "cleverly wierd [sic] belief," given that the U.S. is predominantly theist--or was your institution not in the U.S.?

Our institution was in the US, but from the perspective of the naturalistic philosophers there, it was bizarre, although not reprehensible, that anyone appraised of natural science, etc., would believe in God (one of my profs called Christian theism "[metaphysically] wild").

David Chalmers made a summary of the-expert-philosophers-VS-just philosophers-differences resulting from the survey here:
http://philpapers.org/bbs/thread.pl?tId=426

Edward, do you have some area where you disagree with the consensus of the experts? (I know I have.)

As Chalmers said, too: "Of course those differences could be due to (i) specialists making better-grounded judgments, (ii) selection effects in entering the speciality, (iii) specialists' judgments corrupted by an insider literature, and various other sources. I suspect that most philosophers will agree that each of these sources are at play in some cases, while they'll disagree about which are most at play in which cases!"

I have an interesting question about academic theistic beliefs, although not related to philosophers, per se. My primary degree work has been in the sciences (mostly, interdisciplinary, with chemistry as my home base) and music. I have noticed, almost universally, that music students are theists, but scientists tend to be mixed. Any speculations why that might be?

The Chicken

There is more native sanity in the musically-inclined than the scientifically inclined? [grin]

Now, what do these results mean? You can be sure that some atheists will read the latter two sets of results as evidence only that many people who believe in God for non-philosophical reasons have flooded into philosophy of religion and medieval studies. And they will read the former results as evidence that philosophers who don’t enter the field with a religious ax to grind are more likely to be atheists.
I suspect that a good part of the explanation is the reverse of this. Many people who were already atheists for non-philosophical reasons wanted to go into various sciences as a means of promoting their atheism. However, because the actual science was too dry and boring to make for good red meat, or (more likely) because they lacked the chops to hack it, they went into a related area of philosophy instead (philosophy of biology/neuroscience/mind/cognition/physics/etc) where they could act as atheistic cheerleaders for science without having to actually do any, and where just having the "right" opinions could get them a degree with little intellectual effort thanks to the unimportance (or rather, incompatibility) of logical rigor when it comes to doing naturalistic philosophy.

The Deuce did well to prefix "suspect" to his explanation of the motives of people who do philosophy of the special sciences. After all, one would need difficult to obtain evidence to establish the psychological claims he suspects are true.

There are many interesting questions that arise in the margins of the sciences that scientists are not interested in answering. These questions get shuttled off to philosophers. [I don't have in the mind questions like: Just exactly how much does theism suck?] Perhaps people who work on these questions are interested in these questions because they are interesting questions.

Sometimes I suspect that people who are worked up about certain issues -- e.g. theism, how the US government brought down the WTC towers -- think that those who disagree with them are similarly worked up. But it is often just not true.

This is definitely one of the perils of being a culture warrior.

Oh, classy, Alex: Theists as comparable to 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Remind me again, _why_ did Bobcat think we even _might_ get along?

For my part, I can't help but wonder if this whole survey illustrates a point that seems to be missed - namely that while there are majority views on some philosophical questions, philosophy isn't a field where issues get settled decisively. I'm reminded of Peter Van Inwagen's quip about how (loosely paraphrasing here) if a philosophical question were ever settled, it would likely be a first time in the history of the field.

Hi Lydia,

Alex doesn't actually believe theists are comparable to culture warriors. I know this, because I know him, and he knows I'm a theist, and he knows that I'm rather hyper about it.

That said, keep in mind that The Deuce was making some pretty strong claims about atheist philosophers like Alex. He suspected that atheist philosophers go into philosophy because they can't hack science, because they want to act as cheerleaders, and because they just follow along the opinions of other atheists. I hope you can see that Alex, an atheist philosopher who does the kinds of philosophy The Deuce was making generalizations about, would be offended.

Alex responded in kind by making a similarly spurious comparison--only the difference between Alex's comparison and The Deuce's is that Alex knew the comparison to be spurious. He was trying to get The Deuce to see things from his (Alex's) perspective.

Well, yeah, I'd expect an atheistic philosopher of science to be offended by what I said. I can certainly understand that perspective. Doesn't mean I don't still think it true of a good number of them.

Also, perhaps the fact that I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek didn't come through: It was an intentionally spurious counter-idea to the spurious idea that philosophers of religion go into the field because they're already religious for non-philosophically-justified reasons.

But, that said, I was only being somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I've seen plenty of naturalistic scientistic philosophers who basically just function as cheerleaders of science (see recent posts on Rosenburg), and who get away with all kinds of incoherence and logical slop because their position allows and encourages it (see recent posts on Rosenburg).

Theists as comparable to 9/11 conspiracy theorists

What I said is obviously true. It is obvious that many theists are strongly motivated to support belief in some proposition. In this, they are similar to conspiracy theorists. To use a home-y way of putting things: They have a dog in the race. Of course, this need not tell us anything about the truth of theism or the propriety of believing that there is a god.

But, if you have an argument to that effect, I'd be interested to hear it.

What I said is obviously true. It is obvious that many theists are strongly motivated to support belief in some proposition.

So are car enthusiasts (such as a red 1967 Corvette is the best car, ever), so therefore, car enthusiasts are also comparable to 9/11 conspiracy theorists??

The Chicken

Alex, surely you were choosing 9/11 because of its emotional freight, not just because it, like theism, is something people get enthusiastic about, right?

As for Lydia's reasons for belief in the existence of God, (I think) the main one is the historicity of Jesus' resurrection. You can find her article online on her website at: http://www.lydiamcgrew.com/Resurrectionarticlesinglefile.pdf

So are car enthusiasts (such as a red 1967 Corvette is the best car, ever), so therefore, car enthusiasts are also comparable to 9/11 conspiracy theorists??

Yes. Remind yourself that the truth of the claim that two things are similar does not mean they are similar in every way.

Alex, surely you were choosing 9/11 because of its emotional freight, not just because it, like theism, is something people get enthusiastic about, right?

Right. We're talking not just about enthusiasm, but strong enthusiasm -- belief that is accompanied (perhaps naturally so) with strong emotion.

It is possible to believe in the truth of theism as one believes in the truth of plate tectonics --i.e. without having a dog in the race. (Some of my students believe in the existence of a god in this way -- perhaps because their "belief" plays no important role in their deliberations.)

But theistic belief is often not like that. Maybe it works like this in the case of theism: I suspect that some people have commitments to this or that belief in order that they can count themselves as living up to an ideal. Such commitments are desire-like (in that they are motivating). But they are stronger than mere desire -- they are commitments to an ideal. It is as if these people see their belief as an answer to the question what kind of person am I? And not just an answer, but an answer of a particular kind: My being a good person is partly constituted by my belief that p.

(This might explain why surveys suggest that Americans are more likely to elect a Muslim President than an atheist President.)

A culture warrior would be another (distinct) example of a motivated believer.

"I have noticed, almost universally, that music students are theists, but scientists tend to be mixed. Any speculations why that might be?"

Music, modernist attempts at atonality aside, rests on harmony and union. Experimental science often rests on analysis and the reduction of things into their component parts. (We murder to dissect, etc...)

A few of the sciences, like biology, also face some obnoxious forms of religious opposition, so there is a reactive effect there.

Also American religion in recent decades has gone woozy and therapeutic, which is anathema to the scientific mind but congenial to the musician.

As for philosophy professors, I can't remember ever running into the proselytizing atheist variant. The worst part about my philosophy education was the general lack of religious philosophers or sympathizers among the faculty. This resulted in undergraduates being the main defenders of theism, which is a burden they often cannot bear.

Yes. Remind yourself that the truth of the claim that two things are similar does not mean they are similar in every way.

I know that. I was trying to rein in your statement because I thought it was coming too close to the Fallacy of the Converse Accident. You have stated the fallacy in an altered form in the blockquote I quoted, so I know you know it. Essentially, you said that 9/11 conspiracy theorists have strong beliefs. I just wanted to make sure that you weren't trying to claim that all people with strong beliefs are 9/11 conspiracy theorists (the classic form of the fallacy). Since you already recognize this and weren't trying to do it (I read your post too fast - my apologies)...

Never Mind.

The Chicken

Alex said,

Sometimes I suspect that people who are worked up about certain issues -- e.g. theism, how the US government brought down the WTC towers -- think that those who disagree with them are similarly worked up. But it is often just not true.

He later explained this in terms of theists' having a "dog in the race" because of the life commitment usually considered (reasonably enough) to be involved in theism.

The whole motivistic thing is beside the point. The argument's the thing. Yes, if you believe in the existence of something like the Christian God, this should have implications for your life. But that tells us nothing about whether theistic arguments are good.

We can play this game all day. Nagel is one of the honest people who admits that he doesn't want there to be a God. Plenty of atheists are very "worked up" about atheism. Ever hear of Richard Dawkins? I mean, one of the whole "deals" about the New Atheists is their militance.

To paraphrase something C.S. Lewis once wrote to a correspondent, I don't think that you, Alex, would find it simply _pleasant_ to wake up one day and discovered that the evidence compelled you to believe in God. Most of us have wishes and desires on both sides of such an issue.

So, let's not get snide about theists who have a "dog in the race." The argument's the thing.

Theists as comparable to 9/11 conspiracy theorists

Thank goodness you didn't compare them to people who make stupid analogies. :-)

I agree with Lydia and others. The suggestion that it's only theists who "have a dog in the race" is silly. Atheists "have a dog in the race". Even agnostics may.

Agnostics have a dog in the epistemic race, though maybe not in the metaphysical race. And maybe the agnostic dog only has three legs. ;-)

Anybody besides me think that when it comes to obnoxion (see the Unword Dictionary), Dawkins and P. Z. Myers leave religious folks in the dust? Not to mention the rabid internet defenders of the Church of Darwinism or the Darwinism-defending Committees of Correspondence?

So, I don't get Kevin's point. There are plenty of obnoxious atheists who oppose creationary biology. Maybe that's what he meant.

Mary Midgley had some interesting things to say about the way that many atheists use the Big Bang, etc. as an origins myth. Ruse also has adopted Duane Gish's view that many atheists use Darwinism in a religious sense, yet present the debate as one of science vs. religion. Maybe that's why the Knights of Darwin get so worked up if people test or question the Theory of Common Ancestry; they feel the emotional/quasi-religious need to defend their religion strongly (and thereby function as apologists).

As to why many "scientists" are atheists, I suspect that has to do with the pervasive nature of scientism in our culture. I consider scientism to be more of a threat than naturalism, though there is often overlap.

Regarding whether atheists/agnostics have a dog in the race, here's a bit of interesting research by, of all people, Sam Harris:

In the first neuroimaging study to systematically compare religious faith with ordinary cognition, UCLA and University of Southern California researchers have found that while the human brain responds very differently to religious and nonreligious propositions, the process of believing or disbelieving a statement, whether religious or not, seems to be governed by the same areas in the brain.

The study also found that devout Christians and nonbelievers use the same brain regions to judge the truth of religious and nonreligious propositions.

...

The case for belief being content-independent was further bolstered by the fact that while the trial statements accepted by religious believers were rejected by nonbelievers, and vice versa, the brains of both showed the same pattern of activity for belief and disbelief.

A comparison of all religious with all nonreligious statements suggested that religious thinking is more associated with brain regions that govern emotion, self-representation and cognitive conflict in both believers and nonbelievers, while thinking about ordinary facts is more reliant upon memory retrieval networks. Activity in the brain's anterior cingulate cortex, an area associated with cognitive conflict and uncertainty, suggested that both believers and nonbelievers experienced greater uncertainty when evaluating religious statements.

Explaining the difference in expert and non-expert opinion as the result of experts having greater knowledge makes sense if the size of the difference in opinion and the size of the knowledge gap are comparable. Philosophy is sufficiently inter-related that I doubt there are very many cases where the knowledge gap is huge (because the non-experts are still reasonably well informed). Thus, when we observe, as we do for most of the issues polled, that the difference between non-expert and expert opinion is small, it may be reasonable to think that perhaps the knowledge gap explains the difference (though of course there are other theories one would want to test in particular cases). However, the gap in opinions between experts and non-experts in philosophy of religion is not small. I see no reason to think that the knowledge gap is bigger for philosophy of religion than for other sub-fields of philosophy (the reverse, in fact). Thus, given the small knowledge gap, the very large difference of opinion seems to me to indicate that most of the difference has to be due to something else, and of course since that establishes that there's some big factor other than a knowledge gap at work, the possibility exists that the knowledge gap is not a factor at all, and the big factor, whatever it is, is actually the only factor.

Thank goodness you didn't compare them to people who make stupid analogies.

Certainly. That would have been besides the point, which was to give an account of The Deuce's psychology on the basis of a claim about the psychology of strongly motivated belief... which, as time goes on, seems like a waste of everyone's time and worth regretting. At any rate, I would guess that there is not much interesting to say about the psychology of people who make stupid analogies.

The Deuce: thanks for the linked study. It is certainly worth investigating.

Lydia: Remember that the point about motivated belief was not part of a case against theistic belief. It is probably worth thinking more about what the connections are between the epistemic condition of theistic believers and the claim that theistic belief is often strongly motivated belief. (I haven't read your paper yet, but I worry about the testimony of strongly motivated agents.) My guess, therefore, is that you're right that the arguments -- those that might provide DIY warrant -- are where the action is.

In the meantime, here is a project: work more on the "moral psychology" of religious belief. Contrast cognitive ideals that target particular propositions and cognitive ideals that target particular propositions only indirectly (in virtue of targeting methodological prescriptions). Next stop: epistemology! Think about testimony and motivated belief.

PS: Pruss agrees that theism is often (typically?) motivated. Check out Prosblogion's stimulating discussion of Chalmers' survey.

That's nice for Pruss. I like Alex Pruss very much and respect him, but I'm not in a million years going to agree that theism is typically "motivated belief" *in some contrasting sense* such that atheism or agnosticism is not typically "motivated belief." Because that isn't true. And I'll bet Alex Pruss didn't say it or imply it, but I'm just trying to find time to write a blog post here in between present wrapping, so I'm not going to get involved in a thread there.

Frankly, I find your "project" incredibly boring in prospect. What the hell do you mean, "next stop, epistemology"? I mean, excuse my temporarily unladylike language, but you're really quite the character, aren't you, Alex? I already do epistemology. A lot of it. And publish it. I even have clue #1 what indirect realist-foundationalists believe, which puts me a couple of rungs up on somebody (see the other thread) who evidently thinks indirect realism means that S infers that Barack Obama exists from his spontaneous belief that Obama exists. And actual epistemology ain't got nothing to do with the "moral psychology of religious (or anti-religious) belief." So, save your project.

Aaron Boyden,

From my experience talking to atheist philosophers, they know only Mackie's paper and have hazy impressions of Plantinga, but many, many of them are unfamiliar with responses to Mackie's paper.

Keep in Mind Mackie's paper was written in 1955, and there was a (IMO) successful to it back in 1962 by Nelson Pike, to say nothing of Plantinga's response.

So I think, of a lot of atheist philosophers of my acquaintance at least, including where I got my Ph.D. and where I work, that many of them are about as informed of philosophy of religion as they are of, say, medieval philosophy, philosophy of economics, philosophy of mathematics, or, and here, perhaps, is where the parallel is best, continental philosophy (how many analytic philosophers condemn continental philosophy in the strongest terms while having read almost none of it? I would wager quite a lot).

Lydia,

I have a new anti-reductionist project on testimony that I think would preclude a lot of reductionist arguments that I'd like to present here to get some feedback. Alex seems interested in testimony, as do you. Would you be willing to host my project in a post?

Alex of "indirect realism means that S infers that Barack Obama exists from his spontaneous belief that Obama exists" fame is telling Lydia that she might need to go back and do some epistemology before she's ready to have a serious discussion about religion. You just can't make this stuff up, can you? As someone elsewhere on the internet likes to say: "The less they know, the less they know it."

Lydia, I am reminded of the story of the philosophy prof who explicitly denied theism holds any water and directly challenged any Christians in his class to produce a miracle - to Phil 101 classes.

"The fact this university employs you, sir, is a miracle."

I even have clue #1 what indirect realist-foundationalists believe, which puts me a couple of rungs up on somebody (see the other thread) who evidently thinks indirect realism means that S infers that Barack Obama exists from his spontaneous belief that Obama exists.

You have clue #1 what indirect-realist-foundationalists believe and you're rungs up -- published, even. Maybe that explains why you would be right to think that this person from the other thread has an eccentric view of indirect-realist-foundationalism. How glad I am not to be that person.

I failed to correct your presuppositions about my views about indirect realism because your presuppositions were false(and not fruitfully so). At the time, I thought it would be unladylike to mention it -- and a waste of time. But you have persuaded me: let's be unladylike!

To remind you: The case of the belief in question was a counterexample to the principle that:

The fact that a veridical mental state has a possible non-veridical phenomenal twin entails that we infer the existence of the object of the veridical mental state from the existence of the veridical mental state.

This principle appeared to be playing a role in a line of thought beginning with the possibility of hallucinatory twins for perceptual experiences and ending with the conclusion that we "infer to the existence of the objects of perception". Since the principle is false, we need a new principle. Perhaps you would like to supply it. On the other hand: that might be too boring for you. If so, please feel free to refrain.

As someone elsewhere on the internet likes to say: "The less they know, the less they know it."

Your comment is apt in ways that might surprise you.

Alex, I'd quote what you actually said concerning inferring beliefs from beliefs, but _that_ would take time away from a totally different post I'd like to write, and I also think it would be unfair to Ed in this thread.

TomH, find my e-mail address on the sidebar and send me your thoughts. I shd. warn you that I tend to be *in one sense* a reductionist about testimony--that is to say, I don't view testimony as a "basic belief source" a la someone like Plantinga or Alston. I'm a rip-roaring internalist, so I'm wary about belief sources or belief-generating mechanisms generally.

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